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side with the dignitaries of the Church and representatives of literature, State officials and military commanders assembled about the monarch's person, contracted friendships with these men, shared in their interests, profiting greatly by their intercourse, while they communicated to them in return their own wider and more liberal view of things. Every noble family of high rank, however, was in itself a tiny Versailles, with its own abbes and men of letters who stood in no subordinate position towards its members, but rather associated with them as friends, giving them intellectual animation while

the service of the court, and that court | tesquieu after him. The great Gallican soon became the centre of French life, too, who impressed upon the French first in Paris, then in Fontainebleau, St. Church and French pulpit eloquence their Germain, Versailles. And, together with lasting stamp, Bossuet, was the son of a the importance of the court, that of the judge. But he, as well as Bourdaloue, Parisian Parliament also increased, and it Fléchier, Massillon, and many other disnot only felt its own power as independent tinguished prelates of ancient France of the will of the king, but was occasion- who followed him, became one of the ally inclined to make him feel it too; for stars of Versailles, who contributed in no France in the olden time knew no Jeffreys, smaller degree to the literary wealth of the French judges always preserved their country than courtiers of the highest their political and social independence, be- rank, such as Larochefoucault and St. cause their half-inherited, half-purchased Simon. There were besides a number seats could not be taken from them, and of professional writers living at Verthe wealth of their families was constantly sailles : La Bruyère found his best-known renewed by marriages with the daughters types at court, and Racine sang Louis of rich citizens. The "city" now began XIV.'s connection with Mademoiselle de to group around the Parisian Parliament la Vallière in his "Bérénice," and wrote as the court around the king. Intellec-"Athalie and "Esther for Madame tual and political centralization thus kept de Maintenon's St. Cyr. And side by pace with one another. "Court and city" henceforth became synonymous with representatives of culture. Montesquieu naïvely says: "J'appelle génie d'une nation les mœurs et le caractère d'esprit des différents peuples dirigés par l'influence d'une même cour et d'une même capitale." It is evident that, in Montesquieu's eyes, Germany could not lay claim to a national culture. But "court and city" meant the nobility of the sword and robe and all that belongs to it; and in fact the characteristic features of French culture were, down to the Revolution, nay, even in the National Assembly of 1789, but especially during the Resto- they received a freer knowledge of the ration (1814-1830), which may be looked world in exchange; for the court, which upon as a distinct revival of ancient was the prototype of this whole society France, derived from the courtier and the concentrated around it, was no miniature man of law. Even to the present day the court like that of Lucca or of Parma; it habits and customs, the forms and views was the court of a great power, nay, of of these two classes give the tone, if not the great European power, kar' ¿5ox; in the State, at all events in society. At there was nothing to limit or intercept the time when this national society, to- the view. The highest interests were gether with the national literature, as- treated and decided here; nothing was sumed its definite form, i.e., in the petty, not even court ceremonial, because second third of the seventeenth century, it remained exclusively the form of life the former by throwing off the Spanish and never became at the same time_its yoke and the latter by freely metamor- substance, as was the case in Italy. The phosing Spanish forms, it was these two disputes between Jansenist and Jesuit, beclosely connected classes which took the tween Protestant and Catholic, between initiative in the changes that were then the Gallican Church and the Roman Curia wrought. A Voltaire and a Balzac, a found their echo here. Here it was that Corneille and a Malherbe, met together the supremacy of the Continent and the with a Condé and a Retz, in the Marquise defence of the country were planned. de Rambouillet's drawing-room; all of Here Molière's latest comedies were disthem were more or less intimately con- cussed with the same warmth of interest nected with Parliamentary families fa- as Pascal's letters against the Society of milles de robs). Jesus, or Bossuet's funeral oration on the great Condé. And as the court, so the city; all the educated and wealthy, to whatever class they might belong, took a

Pascal, like almost all Port-Royal, originally belonged to the nobility of the robe, as did Montaigne before, and Mon

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living interest in these questions, which | ceived from nature a certain amount of at once grew into national ones - not grace, of which she often endeavors, not least the women. unsuccessfully, to divest herself. If even Even a century later, Sterne expressed so proud a man as Louis XIV. thought fit his opinion, that "with the French people to doff his hat before the lowest of his nothing was Salic, except the monarchy." kitchen-maids, whom he might chance to It is, in fact, the female element which meet on a back staircase at Versailles, always has reigned, and still reigns su- this was merely a tribute which France, preme in France, especially in the capital. embodied in his person, was always ready Even Bonaparte, who certainly cannot be to pay to a sex, whose humblest members accused of allowing too free play to the could lay claim to the rights of grace and fair sex, was forced to admit when he weakness. This grace is not confined to came to Paris as a young man of twenty- the passing bloom of youth, nor to the six (1795) that "this was the only place outward person. There is also a gracewhere they deserved to take the helm. fulness of heart and of mind especially The men thought of nothing else; lived feminine. Thus, self-sacrifice and devoonly in and for them. A woman must tion, patience in suffering, intellectual have passed six months in Paris to know freshness and suggestive naïveté, what was due to her, and how she might shrewd, direct judgment, and an equally rule." It is easy to betray the secret. shrewd, direct speech, not less than cunThe French women of those times were ning, tears, and the desire to please, are content to fight with the weapons peculiar especially feminine weapons, seldom at to their sex. A Madame de Sévigné, a the command of the other sex. Now, the Madame de Lafayette, were women be- French women of those two glorious cenfore they were anything else. With them turies, from Madame de Chevreuse down authorship was quite a secondary matter, to Madame Roland, owed their soverif, indeed, such writing can be called au- eignty, their well-merited sovereignty over thorship. True, France was not without the heroes of thought and action, to the its professional authoresses, like Made- judicious use of these arms, not to an unmoiselle de Scudéry and Madame Des- pleasing endeavor to compete with men on houlières, but even they had a far greater their own battle-field. For no species of personal than literary influence in society, interest was foreign to them, and so they and their period was short. From the presided over social life, while their influ time when Louis XIV. attained his ma- ence in politics, religion, and literature jority, the political women of the seven- was completely decisive. Nor do I by teenth, as well as the philosophical women any means allude here only to the most of the eighteenth century, no longer ap- conspicuous figures, such, for instance, pear directly before the public. Even as Madame de Longueville, who succeedMadame de Staël, in reality only half a ed in seducing her husband and brother, Frenchwoman, thought a great deal more the great Condé,* ay, even a Larochefouof her personal connections than of her cault and a Turenne, to open rebellion writings, and had a warmer heart for her against the crown; or as Madame de political friends than for her political Maintenon, who determined Louis XIV.'s principles. Nevertheless, we cannot deny inner policy for so long; as Angélique that the unfeminine element began al- Arnaud, or Madame Guyon, the souls of ready with her to make itself objection- French Jansenism and of French Quietably felt. The women of the ancien ism; as a Tencin and Geoffrin, whose régime shunned all publicity; they were salons gave the tone to the society of a content to exercise an indirect influence, whole century; I refer here to the numruling over the rulers in all departments, bers of women whose names were hardly without ever thinking it necessary to re- known to the public, though they stood sort to the kind of warfare which belongs behind the greatest statesmen, the first to the other sex. Anacreon tells us that writers, the leading men of society, as we nature has given each created being its gather by the new discoveries made from own special weapons, - the bull its horns, year to year by the admirers and students the horse his hoof, man reason, and wom- of that unique age. Nor does it do to be en beauty. By this, however, we are by no means to understand that all women are unreasonable and all men ugly, any more than that all men are reasonable and all women beautiful. He means that every woman, without exception, has re

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At the time of the Fronde such offensive and

defensive alliances between influential women and ambitious politicians were matters of everyday occurrence; of this kind were the unions between Retz and Madame de Chévreuse, Beaufort and Madame de Montbazon, Condé and Madame de Chatillon.

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too quick to condemn the "corruption " or though only consistent with the whole even laxity of morals of that period; for it constitution of French society, that young presents fine, and by no means isolated, girls should have been strictly excluded instances of conjugal fidelity and attach- from it; for it was less the apprehension ment. For example, the stout-hearted lest they might fall in love foolishly, or Duchesse de Chaulnes, of whom St. Si- contract an early undesirable marriage, mon relates that she refused to survive which suggested this exclusion, than the her husband; then the Duchesse de desire to be able freely to discourse on all Choiseul, the friend of Madame du Def- topics, even such as young girls cannot fand and of the Abbé Barthélemy, who understand, or which it is either irksome almost worshipped her husband, the min- or prejudicial for them to listen to. Now, ister to Louis XV., albeit he was twenty conversation was the great aim of all years her senior; and the Marquise Costa social intercourse in France, if it can be de Beauregard, whose letters to her hus- said to have had any aim except sociabilband and children, published a few years ity. It was to the French, what art was ago, give us an insight into so noble a to the Italians of the Renaissance, at once soul; the Maréchale de Beauveau, and the substance and the form of their mennumerous others. Many of those more tal activity. "On dit que l'homme est un questionable liaisons, moreover, which animal sociable," says Montesquieu; "sur were tolerated in those times, were in real- ce pied-là il me parait que le Français est ity little less than conjugal unions. What plus homme qu'un autre; c'est l'homme other name can we give to the bond ex- par excellence, car il semble fait uniqueisting between the Duc de Nivernais and ment pour la société.” It was not solitary Madame de Rochefort, or between the thought, imagination, and feeling, not a Chevalier de Boufflers and Madame de direct contemplation and reproduction Sabran, even before the legal sanction of nature, not enterprise and action with in the one case after forty, in the other the adroit manipulation of varying interafter twenty years - had become possi-ests, but the intellectual elaboration we ble? Can we conceive purer relations call conversation, i.e., the form of menthan those which existed between Made- tal exertion in which thoughts and feelings moiselle de Condé and Monsieur de la are employed rather as stimulants to Gervaisais, to whom marriage was forbid- excite our faculties and bring them into den, and who in vain sought to forget a play, than as their purpose and object, hopeless passion, he on the battle-field, which was the crowning result of that she in a convent? And can we venture to culture. The sudden birth of ideas in confound even relatively less sacred con- living language, brought about by the nections, such as those between Madame contact of mind with mind; the art of d'Houdetot and St. Lambert, Madame du imperceptibly guiding and turning the Deffand and Horace Walpole, Madame game; the satisfaction of having found a du Chatelet and Voltaire, not to mention suitable, an elegant, or an eloquent form others - connections which lasted for for an idea, of being able to introduce the many years, and derived their nourish-highest subjects into conversation without ment from a mutual interest in mankind's becoming abstruse, the lowest without loftiest aims, can we, I repeat, confound being vulgar, of speaking of natural things these with the thoughtless liaisons which begin and end in the caprice of a moment? When inclined to depreciate the moral value of these women of the ancien régime, let us rather call to mind the heroism, the firmness, the resignation with which, in the time of the great Revolution, they mounted the scaffold - where they were to expiate their enthusiasm for the ideals of their youth.

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without impropriety, of artificial things with simplicity, of gliding lightly over the surface of some matters yet so as to stimulate thought en passant, of diving to the depths of others without effort, of opening out sudden views, touching on personalities lightly without entering more deeply into the subject, of suggesting ideas by such equivocalities; above all, the art of satisfying one's personal vanity by flattering that of others, - this spirit it is which pervades the whole culture of The relations between the Comte de Toulouse and a nation, whose gregarious propensities Madame de Gondrin, between the Duc de Sully and Madame de Vaux, between the Marquis de St. Aulaire are not compatible with solitude, which is and Madame de Lambert, between the Comte Lassaye unable to exist without conventions, yet and Madame de Bourbon, between the Maréchal which feels the need of moving freely and nature; the last of these, however, could never be rati-gracefully within those arbitrary limits. Something of this spirit was communi

It was a characteristic distinction,

d' Uxelles and Madame de Ferriol were of a similar

fied by marriage.

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cated to the family, to public life, and to | although both were held in high esteem literature, and made of the cultured cir and widely cultivated, even before the cles of France a society, the unwritten great rebellion of the seventeenth century, laws and intangible organism of which never had been leading principles in Enhave outlived even the Revolution and its glish society; for even at that time poliReign of Terror, a society which is only tics were already predominant. A high at its ease, morally and intellectually, in and independent tone prevailed in the moral "tights," because that costume has society which Shakespeare and Ben Jonbecome a second skin-which no doubt son have shown us, and which was repreimplies that it has lost all conception of the sented by men of the stamp of Spenser, nude-i.e., the final in truth and nature. Bacon, Sidney, Russell. Women played I have said that this code of manners, a considerable and important, yet thorlike the preponderance of the two classes oughly feminine, part in it. Liberty of in which it had been developed in the speech was very great, and seldom decourse of centuries, lasted long after those generated into coarseness. Classical classes had lost their political privileges, education was universal and profound, although old Talleyrand used to say and women shared in it; the interest in "He who did not live before 1789, and art and literature was extremely vivid. did not take part in the conversation of For a moment it seemed as if England those times, will never know the highest were destined to realize the ideal of enjoyment allotted to mankind." Let us modern society; as if, under the fortify. but call to mind the men of the Constitu- ing influence of public life, liberty, and ante, the Malouets, Lally-Tollendals, La- propriety, individual development and meths, Lafayettes, etc., and the Girondins, unity of culture, a taste for art and a nearly all of them men of law and guard- lively, witty conversation would have free ians of ancient forms; let us remember play. This healthy development, howthe leading circles of the Restoration, ever, was nipped in the bud by the great and the reign of Louis Philippe. Even Rebellion. To say of any great complex down to the second empire and third of events, resulting from a long series republic, literary productions were not of facts and circumstances, that it might deemed indispensable to the reception of have been different, would be unhistorimembers into the ranks of the Academy, cal. What may be said, however, is, that dukes, prelates, and illustrious men of the natural growth of England's moral law being admitted as mere representa- and intellectual life was stunted by the tives of the taste of ancient France in modern society. These forms, it is true, are no longer so clearly marked as they were, and more than once passion has overstepped the bounds of propriety even in the most select circles. Nevertheless, what was essential in the tradition is still alive, and the present exclusion from the State of the educated classes, and of those who have any social importance, may perhaps have the beneficial result of allowing French genius to come to itself again, and slowly to reconstitute its empire undisturbed by political interests.

great Rebellion which saved England's independence, the Protestant faith, and political liberty. Still this event was unavoidable, for it was the product of a second development, accomplished within the core of the nation, which ran parallel with that higher one proceeding from the Renaissance. However this may be, Puritanism brushed the bloom off the national spirit of England. Later on, it is true, that spirit put forth a new blossom, which from the time of Locke to that of Hume brought England intellectually to the front; there arose even a period of belles-lettres with which nothing in the European literature of the past SOMETHING analogous to French court century can compare; nevertheless, whatlife had begun to appear in England un- ever may be its intrinsic value, this litder the Tudors and the Stuarts; and here, erature had none of the delicate fragrance likewise, it was the Church, the army, and emitted by the creations of Chaucer and the law, in a close alliance and assembled of Shakespeare, which is missing even in round the throne as their centre, which the inimitable productions of their sucgave the tone in society. Even down to cessors, from Dryden and De Foe down the present day, these three professions to Goldsmith and Sterne. The modest, are the only ones which, far from depriv- delicate bloom, the subtle, changeful hue, ing their members of the name and posi- which feminine influences cast over a tion of a gentleman, actually confer it. national literature, was destroyed; henceStill art, as well as social intercourse, | forth English literature became a litera

ture of men, as English society a society | sessions had not been confiscated during of men. The new impulse under Charles the Reformation, was, and in fact still is, II. was but a sorry imitation of French himself a well-to-do country gentleman, manners and customs; even a St. Evre- whose rectory could often vie with the mond and a Grammont lost all living dwellings of county proprietors. Besides, sympathy with their country's culture; he could marry and his sons and daughthe whole movement was, in fact, but a ters share the sports and pastimes of the coarse caricature of French life; on the county families; he was not irrevocably banks of the Thames the refined Epicu- condemned, like the French and Italian reanism of French society degenerated priest, to a single life, and thus excluded into a low sensuality; liberty became from all intimate family connections, nor license, high spirits dissolute reckless- to that of the needy country parson in ness, elegance luxurious ostentation. It Germany, whose means scarcely suffice was not till after the second Revolu- to make both ends meet, or, indeed, to tion of 1688 that a new kind of society place him on a level with the wealthier was formed, which has maintained its peasants. The successful barrister and ground down to our own time. judge, too (this class had begun since 1688 to be virtually, if not legally, irremovable, a quality which had done more than anything else to secure the independence of the judges in France), the pensioned officer, the sons of the retired merchant, and, later on, of the returned nabob, on their side also became part of the country gentry, at any rate as far as influence was concerned, if not equally in, a social point of view, in virtue of their landed property. Now it was this country nobility and gentry which gave the tone in English society- I say English, for circumstances were different in Scotland, and under their influence Scotch society assumed a form more similar to that of Germany. It consisted of free and independent men of wealth, most of whom had studied at Cambridge or Ox ford, while many had seats in Parliament. They managed the affairs of the villages which lay within the precincts of their estates; they were justices of the peace and magistrates, and commanded in the militia. In a word, they did the State good and gratuitous service, and this alone, in the absence of an organized class of paid officials, would have secured them political predominance. In England, however, the law did not play the same part, either in politics or in literature, as in France. I can recall no writer of note, no prominent English statesman of the past century, who was a member either of the bench or the bar. Fielding, it is true, was a lawyer and even a London justice, but he was also a thorough gentleman both by birth and by education; and though Burke and Sheridan nominally commenced the study of law, they can hardly be said to have belonged to the profession; whereas the elder Lord Melville, who, like Lord Bacon before and Lord Brougham after him, really proceeded from it, never occupied any com

Even during the reigns of William III. and Queen Anne, but more decidedly under the two first Georges, the disaffected gentry had by degrees withdrawn to their estates. If all of them did not care to express their dislike of those “d▬▬d Hanoverians" with the bluntness of a Squire Western, most were at any rate of his way of thinking. Thus country life, which Englishmen have always loved, became the normal existence of the higher orders. Even when the gentry, under Robert Walpole - himself a country gentleman - began to be reconciled to the court, the custom of remaining in the country excepting during the Parliamentary session, i.e., the spring, was not discontinued; whereas, under Elizabeth and James I., it had been usual to spend at least three quarters of the year in London. True, the rusticated squire at first did not escape the shafts of the town wits and dandies; nevertheless the ridiculous figure of Sir Willful Witwould, who had never been to town "since the Revolution" (1700), soon gave way to the pleasing, humoristic form of Sir Roger de Coverley, till Squire Allworthy finally became the personification of all peculiarly English virtues. For though this gentry for the most part bore no titles, still it was a nobility, and more than one plain Mr. could trace his pedigree back to the Norman Conquest. At the same time the younger sons of the nobles descended either directly, or by means of the three liberal professions we have mentioned, to the gentry, while wealthy merchants procured their sons or grandsons-the English say it takes three generations to make a gentleman an entrance into the ranks of the gentry by the purchase of landed property or by means of the same professions. The English clergyman moreover, the greater part of whose pos

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